Elizabeth Warren's green mistake
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren must love high oil and gas prices, not to mention high taxes. If elected president, in her effort to save the planet she plans to burden the middle class by banning fossil fuel extractions on all federal lands and in coastal waters.
Warren revealed the proposal earlier this week in an op-ed on Medium. This move would no doubt increase oil and gasoline prices in a dramatic way and would actually hurt the economy -- especially the middle class.
This is surprising because this is the same Sen. Warren who said last month that she was not thrilled about the prospect of raising the federal gas tax, from 18.4 cents per gallon, because she was worried that such a tax “falls hardest on working people.” Perhaps she isn’t aware of the potential impact that her “plan for public lands” could have on working people, not to mention the hit to the economy.
A step back toward the anti-drilling Obama era may cause the energy industry to cut jobs, lower investment in energy and reduce our GDP. In fact, her anti-drilling ban would impact the average American more than she can obviously imagine.
Warren claims that the federal land in question constitutes 25 percent of total land in the United States.
“The Trump administration is busy selling off our public lands to the oil, gas and coal industries for pennies on the dollar—expanding fossil fuel extraction that destroys pristine sites across the country while pouring an accelerant on our climate crisis,” Warren wrote in the post.
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Is she saying that perhaps these pristine lands can be sold for the right price, sort of like an oil company shake down? At the same time, she doesn’t mention jobs or national security.
It seems Warren may be trying to “out green” other Green New Deal presidential candidates. While her call for this total ban makes her stand out in the crowded field, it is clear she has not thought out what impact this would have on the average American. President Obama’s legacy was damaged because some of his green policies helped slow the U.S. economic recovery and put undue pain on a big portion of America.
Had President Obama embraced the American ingenuity of the shale revolution earlier instead of fighting it, the U.S. economy would have recovered much faster and we might be saying President Hillary Clinton instead of President Trump. Instead, Obama chose to have people struggle so he could push his green energy ideology. It seems that Warren and other Green New Deal presidential hopefuls want to make the same mistake.
Phil Flynn is senior energy analyst at The PRICE Futures Group and a Fox Business Network contributor. He is one of the world's leading market analysts, providing individual investors, professional traders, and institutions with up-to-the-minute investment and risk management insight into global petroleum, gasoline, and energy markets. His precise and timely forecasts have come to be in great demand by industry and media worldwide and his impressive career goes back almost three decades, gaining attention with his market calls and energetic personality as writer of The Energy Report. You can contact Phil by phone at (888) 264-5665 or by email at pflynn@pricegroup.com.